New pilot project of the Ministry of Education: medical nurses to be stationed in schools across the country
Walla has learned that the "institutional nurse" model will launch this coming September, with nurses being stationed in ten elementary schools. As part of their role, they will provide medical response to students with special needs, perform first aid, and lead health promotion programs throughout the school.
The Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Health have approved a pilot for the "institutional nurse" model in elementary schools across the country, Walla learned. The program will apply to ten elementary schools starting this coming September with the beginning of the upcoming school year. The decision was made after the Knesset had examined the return of medical nurses to schools in recent months.
According to the criteria document, in the initial pilot phase, priority will be given to schools with a larger number of students with medical needs, but the goal of the program is to examine the effectiveness and professionalism of the service for the entire school community. As part of the nurses' role, they will provide medical response to students with special needs, perform first aid, and lead health promotion programs among all students.
As early as this September, four nurses will be allocated to schools in the Haifa and Jerusalem districts, operated by the "Terem" company. In the central region, four nurses will be allocated via the "Femi Premium" company, and two additional nurses will operate in areas managed directly by the Ministry of Health.
The program will continue throughout the upcoming school year and will be accompanied by research aimed at examining the "institutional nurse" format with the goal of making it a permanent part of the school staff. The nurse will be employed at 75% capacity, about 30 hours a week. Schools selected for the program will receive joint funding from the Ministries of Education and Health.
The program is intended for schools where at least three students require medical assistance due to their health condition. The nurse will map the health needs of the students, centralize information on health declarations, hearing and vision tests, and vaccinations, and will meet with parents and students who require unique medical response, such as life-threatening allergies, epilepsy, or diabetes, in accordance with the attending physician's instructions. Another condition for participation is the existence of at least three educational assistants currently employed full-time for the purpose of providing medical assistance.
The nurse will replace the educational assistants who accompany students for medical supervision and will provide all the health services to which students are entitled under the National Health Insurance Law. Students requiring invasive medical response, including oxygen administration, gastrostomy feeding, and similar treatments, will not be included in the program at this stage and will continue to receive the existing response without change.
In addition, the nurse will provide first aid to all students, including emergency treatment for allergies using an epinephrine injector. In the event of a disease outbreak, she will act to identify cases, report to the health bureau, and assist in the epidemiological investigation. Likewise, the nurse will be responsible for training the educational staff on health and first aid topics, and will lead programs on nutrition, physical activity, sleep, screen limitation, hygiene, adolescence, prevention of dangerous behaviors, mental well-being, and building resilience. She will also participate in the school steering committee to promote a healthy lifestyle.
The decision was made after a document from the Knesset's Research and Information Center revealed that the cost of placing a permanent nurse in every elementary and middle school in Israel would amount to about 460 to 488 million shekels per year. This is a cost similar to the scope of public budgets already allocated today for student health services and medical assistants, the reason for which is a 20-fold jump in the number of children eligible for a medical assistant within 15 years.
The main factor for the increase in the number of children eligible for a medical assistant is food allergies. Out of all those eligible, 8,339 students received eligibility due to food allergy - about 81% of all cases. In the last five years alone, about 3,700 students have been added with eligibility for assistance due to allergy. In the 2024/2025 school year, the Ministry of Education transferred about 635 million shekels for budgeting medical assistants, of which about 523 million shekels were for children with food allergies. In schools alone, about 3,600 medical assistants were allocated, with more than 2,200 of them accompanying students with allergies.
The Ministries of Health and Education admitted that there is no organized reporting system in real-time, and therefore there is no clear picture of the number of incidents, their severity, or the scope of interventions required.
Currently, this concerns ten schools that will operate in this format in the upcoming school year. Priority is given to schools where there is a larger number of students with medical needs and where more than four educational assistants are employed for medical response. At the end of the school year, the ministries will examine the program's effectiveness and the possibility of expanding it. The Ministry of Education supports the return of school nurses and believes there is a possibility to replace the assistants accompanying for medical purposes, and also to expand the provision of medical services to students with allergies in the older grades.
